November 16, 2017

   We have had a different kind of experience in preparation for this trip.  We will be away for all of December missing all of the Christmas festivities at home.
    Originally, we booked two cruises with a week in between the cruises. The second cruise will have a different blog title. The original plans were to take a cruise through the Panama Canal leaving Florida and entering the Panama Canal from east to west and then cruising to Valparaiso, Chile, staying there for a week then boarding another ship in Valparaiso and cruising south to Antarctica then north to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
   In late August, just before we left for New Delhi, India, we were advised that the Antarctic cruise embarkation port had been changed from Valparaiso, Chile, to San Antonio, Chile, - a port town 91 km south of Valparaiso for which the drive in part takes route 68.  We had already booked seven days at a loft apartment located about one kilometer from the passenger cruise terminal.  We were able to shorten our stay by one day and book a hotel in San Antonio for the night before the second cruise.  We planned to take the local city to city bus from Valparaiso to San Antonio.
   Then 9 days before the Panama Canal cruise was to leave, we received an email advising us that Panama Canal cruise would now be ending in San Antonio rather than Valparaiso, Chile. We already knew that there are some labour problems and shipping agent disagreements at the Valparaiso port, so we were not completely surprised.  However, to see how other passengers felt, I logged onto Cruise Critic and the thread was in an uproar. People had booked a few days post cruise in the resort town of Valparaiso and they did not have transportation to get there from San Antonio. Was the cruise company going to arrange a shuttle – no!  Could someone else such as the travel agent from Arizona arrange transport then?  She did some investigating as did other passengers and we contacted our accommodations in Valparaiso only to find that docking day is the Immaculate Conception Day Holiday.
   It is a national holiday in Roman Catholic Chile. There are 13 other South American and European countries which celebrate this day.  It is believed on this date that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was conceived and protected from original sin for the rest of her life.  Believers must attend church on this day. And - - there is a pilgrimage which closes the highway route 68 leading out of Valparaiso to the capitol, Santiago, for the entire day and, at about half way, the pilgrimage route turns toward San Antonio going to Lo Vasquez Sanctuary.  At the Sanctuary, multiple masses are held beginning at midnight and ending in the early evening. Thousands of people walk or cycle along the route so no vehicular traffic.


The port was changed from Valparaiso to San Antonio because from Valparaiso the buses would not have been able to take passengers to Santiago airport to meet their flight schedules.  There is another highway out of San Antonio to Santiago and its International airport so from San Antonio flights can be caught.  I also checked on Cruise Critic for the cruise scheduled to leave from Valparaiso and it has changed to San Antonio too so passengers could get to the ship. (Most passengers are off ships by 9:30 a.m. and new passengers are allowed onto the ship about 1 p.m. so there is a very small window for the passenger change over.)
  We realized that we needed to arrange accommodation in San Antonio for that first night and adjust our Valparaiso reservation for a second time.  It will be a topic of discussion on the first days of the cruise. We will take a local bus from San Antonio to Valparaiso the second day and be able to purchase round trip tickets and see the country side probably passing Lo Vasquez Sanctuary.
    We are ready for our adventure.
Our postings will be intermittent as we are not planning on purchasing any internet time and will post when we are in port were we can access Wi-fi.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

December 10, 2017

Image
   The sun was shining in a blue sky, there was a little wind and the temperature was 12 C, as we ventured to find the parada (bus stop) for local bus 605 to take us to Viña del Mar.   Within ten minutes we found it on Av. Playa Ancha.   The bus trip took about 20 minutes – being Sunday there was very little traffic.   We got to see lots of different areas of Valparaiso as the road followed the harbor shore. As we entered Viña del Mar, we saw the Floral Clock, known as Reloj de Flores, and pushed the button to signal to stop at the next parada.    We had 90 minutes to explore before returning to the floral clock. We walked along Av. Marina past the modern ocean side Sheraton Miramar hotel, Castillo Wulff almost on the beach and above on the cliff, Castillo Brunet, constructed of gray stone from Portugal.   Castillo Wulff was constructed between 1905 and 1908 and in 1995 became a National Historical Monument.   We walked across the bridge...
Read more

November 25, 2017

Image
       This morning we arrived at George Town, Grand Cayman.   Grand Cayman is the largest of the Cayman Islands, which are governed by United Kingdom.   The smaller islands are called Cayman Brac and Little Cayman.   Cuba is the closest country to the Cayman Islands at only 149 miles north and Jamaica is little further at 167 miles to the southeast. The Cayman Islands were discovered by Christopher Columbus on his third or fourth voyage to the Americas in 1503.   The sky was mainly cloudy, temperature 78 F and a light breeze.   The exchange rate here is one Canadian dollar is worth about 65.4 cents in Cayman dollars or if you wanted to by a t-shirt priced at $10 Cayman Dollars, to declare it for Canadian Customs the cost to show would be about $15.42 in Canadian currency.    The Cayman Port is celebrating its 40 th anniversary this year. There was one other cruise ship anchored near us the Aida Luna....
Read more

November 29, 2017

Image
    We crossed the equator during the night, after we cruised along the coast of Columbia to along the coast of the Republic of Ecuador.    This morning there was a haze and thin clouds, but the temperature was about 75 F and very little wind.   We could see beautiful beaches from the ship’s decks.     Manta, located in Manabi province, is one of the Republic of Ecuador’s largest ports and is famous for its tuna fishing industry. International major brands of tuna are processed here in one of the 16 facilities. The dock was within the working port and there were fishing boats unloading their catches at the next pier. There are 160 fishing boats on the tuna fleet. There was no smell of fish even though the ship was docked between five fishing boats that were unloading their frozen catches.   About 40 cruise ships dock in Manta each year.    Ecuador has some tall mountains in the Andes, some over 6,000 meters high. The tallest...
Read more